


The Guilty Ones

by AKA_47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Abortion, F/M, finale, warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The one thing Mackenzie had never been vocal about was having children."<br/>Mackenzie never wanted children and when she discovered she was pregnant, she made a choice that could forever destroy everything she built with Will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All That's Known

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stress this enough: I do not believe that Mac would do this. Obviously, the finale shows that she and Will are both thrilled to be parents. I don't prefer this version of events. It was just something to write while I was feeling rather angst-y. Don't read if you're not comfortable with discussion of abortion, or if you're in a good mood and don't want it ruined, or whatever. Also, until about an hour ago this was supposed to be a one shot. Now, I'm not sure. I put the warning of character death because of the abortion itself. The title comes from a song in the musical Spring Awakening, so does the chapter title.

Mackenzie had a few stand out talents as a child. She had a knack for reading and languages. She charmed everyone she met, but most of all, she was very vocal about what she wanted. She was one of those rare children you could look at and say, “she will do exactly what she says she’s going to do when she grows up,” and so when Mackenzie announced at 6 that she was going to do the news, no one doubted her. While every other little girl was dreaming of the perfect wedding, Mac picked colleges, dreamt of internships, becoming the very best at her career. No one tried to change her, no one who knew her anyway.

“Mackenzie set her path a long time ago. She’ll find her own way,” her mother was fond of saying.

Mac was never sure where exactly the end of that path was, but she’d learned a little bit about sacrifice along the way, what she was willing to give up and what she wasn’t. Her relationship with Will worked because he understood her dedication. It didn’t scare him. It made _him_ better, too. She didn’t have to sacrifice for him. She thought she knew what their life would be like, could picture it, until the phone call.

The one thing Mackenzie had never been vocal about was having children.

It was too big a sacrifice. She couldn’t give 100% to her job and 100% to a child, and she couldn’t have a child without giving 100% of herself. She’d made her choice a long time ago. She’d picked her career. If she’d been sad about what she was giving up she couldn’t remember now.

Mac’s hand trembled as she hung up her phone, shook as she opened the door to the church. She balled her hands into fists as she walked up the aisle of the church, willing the shaking not to spread to her legs as she slid back into the pew beside Will.

“Everything all right?” He asked, glancing up from his hymnal.

She forced herself to smile. “Mhm,” she murmured, because it was the only thing she could trust her voice to say.

She looked at him, hoping against hope that she could make herself be happy about this for his sake. She loved him so much, and she wanted that to be enough, she wanted to look at him and say, “we can do this,” but that wasn’t how love worked. Loving Will didn’t mean that she could compromise herself, worse, that she could knowingly bring _a person_ into the world who would forever be something inflicted on her rather than a blessing.

She was thankful that she had a legitimate reason to cry when the tears burned in her eyes.

\----

Jim could hardly believe his luck. In less than a week he and Maggie had finally gotten together _and_ he was promoted to EP. He couldn’t stop smiling. It didn’t matter that Maggie was going to DC. She deserved it, and they would work it out. He just kept thinking that it was all because of Mac. He felt like he would never stop owing her, which was fine. If he was going to be indebted to anyone he would want it to be Mac.

He bought her a bamboo plant as an office-warming gift. Not that bamboo necessarily said “thanks for my relationship and my job.” Maggie had said he should go with the orchid, but he didn’t trust Mac to keep it alive (“Is it that you don’t trust Mac to keep it alive, or you think you’ll kill it before you get the chance to give it to her?” She had asked, to which he had steadfastly replied, “no comment”). But in the end an orchid wouldn’t have been adequate thanks either, and he ended up cradling the bamboo plant to his chest as he made his way upstairs to Mac’s office.

She was working late, of course. Everyone had gone home, even Will, at her insistence. The hallway was dark and silent. Silent, until he got close enough to her office to hear her ragged breaths. She was gasping, and he jogged the last few feet to her door, wrenching it open to find Mac curled into a ball on the floor, quaking with each breathless sob.

“Oh my God.” Jim crashed to his knees, hands fluttering over her, unsure where to start. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and terrified. He settled for checking her pulse, rapid under his fingers.

“Okay.” Jim steeled his nerves, settling himself next to her on the floor and taking her hand from where it was curled around her stomach and placing it in his own. He eased her rigid fingers apart. He met her eyes.

“You’re all right,” he assured her. “You’re safe. Just breathe.” He took a deep breath to illustrate, but Mac only shook her head wildly.

“Whatever it is Mac, I promise we’ll fix it.” His free hand smoothed her hair back. “You’re not alone. I’m right here. You’re safe.” He said the words over and over again until the desperate gasps lapsed into infrequent sobs, and he helped her into a sitting position, back braced against the wall.

She laid her head against his shoulder. “Thank you.” Her voice was raw and choked, but anything was better than the crying.

“It’s nothing.”

He let the silence stretch on for what might have been hours, but was probably only minutes. He didn’t look at her. He stared at the forgotten bamboo plant, fallen over in his haste, rocks strewn on the carpet. He knew from experience that Mac would talk when she was ready, and she didn’t disappoint.

“I’ve done something I don’t think we can come back from.”

“You and Will?”

He felt her nod against his shoulder.

Jim shook his head, “Will loves you. Whatever it is he’ll forgive you.”

She let out a strangled laugh, “I don’t even forgive me, Jim. I doubt he can.”

“Well, I forgive you.” He glanced over at her as she offered him a small, sad smile.

“You don’t even know what I did.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

It never would.

\----

She ended up pacing the apartment, arms wound tight around her stomach, trying to ease the cramps that wouldn’t go away. It all felt so eerily similar to the night she told him about Brian, right down to the debate about whether she should tell him at all. She could live with the secret, hide it away and never tell him about the life he could have had if he hadn’t married someone who was selfish, who had made up her mind too many years ago to count that she wouldn’t have a child. Except that she couldn’t live with it. She couldn’t look at him every day and lie to him with her silence. She couldn’t pretend that life was the same as it had been, not when every inch of her body screamed at her that she’d made a mistake, when her brain warred with her heart about what she’d done.

She crept over to the bed, forcing breaths in and out, forcing herself to reach her hand out and touch his shoulder. “Will?” Her voice was lost so that there was no sound, only the shape of the name. She cleared her throat and tried again, shaking him this time.

Will groaned, rolling to blink up at her, growing suddenly alert when he saw her face. She could only imagine what it looked like. “What’s wrong?”

Mac perched herself on the end of the mattress, curling her leg underneath her mostly to keep it from shaking with anxiety. “I have to tell you something.”

He sat up, reaching for the lamp, but she caught his hand to stop it. “No. It’s better when I can’t really see your face.”

“What is it, Mac?”

“Oh, God, I feel sick.” She bent into herself, forcing herself to speak through the wave of nausea. “And I have no idea whether that’s because I’m nervous or because of the procedure because the doctor said--”

“Wait, procedure? Fuck, Mac. What the fuck are you talking about?” He turned on the light, ignoring her squeak of protest.

“I didn’t tell you about it. I think that’s the worst part. No, maybe not. Not the worst part, but it might be the part you won’t forgive me for. I didn’t tell you because I knew that you would talk me out of it. You would say something amazing and I would start to rethink everything I wanted. Everything I don’t want, I guess.”

Mac forgot how to breathe. She forgot how to let air in between words. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was in her throat, choking her. Will didn’t touch her. He didn’t assure her. She didn’t blame him. She was glad. He wouldn’t say something he would regret. He wouldn’t tell her it was all right before he knew.

_You’re not choking_ , she reminded herself, forcing the air in despite her heart’s thudding. “I was pregnant.” She didn’t wait for the words to register. Not the content, not the _was_ before it. “I had an abortion. And you’re pro-life, but that’s not even the point. The point is that it was you’re baby and I didn’t tell you, because I was afraid that you wouldn’t understand that _I had to._ It’s not about you. Jesus, if I were going to have a baby with anyone it would be you, but I don’t _want_ a baby, Will, and you can’t have children if you don’t want them. I couldn’t do that.”

Mac swiped at the tears that made their way furiously down her cheeks. She needed to see him, needed to see the damage she’d inflicted. Will didn’t move, so neither did she. She didn’t even dare glance at the clock to gauge how much time had passed since her admission. She just waited, waited for some sign that he’d even heard her, but Will’s face was blank, impassive.

“You were pregnant.” When the words finally came, exploding out of the dark room like a bomb, she jumped.

“Yes. I’m so sorry, Will.” She started to reach for him, but the space between them suddenly felt like a wall. She could almost see him constructing in, carefully shielding himself. Her hand fell to grip her knee instead.

“You never wanted children.” It wasn’t a question. She’d told him as much when they were first together. With his own traumatic childhood, Will had been quick to agree, but back then the idea of a family was hypothetical and if it never happened it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

Mackenzie shook her head. “No.”

“You’d be a good mother.” The words were quiet, emotionless, but they rang around her like an accusation and she stood up, backing to the opposite end of the room and running a hand over her face.

“And a bad journalist.” She looked at her feet as she said it. “I can’t be good at both.”

“You didn’t even try.” He was still barely speaking. It would have been better if he yelled. The quiet was dangerous, like a gun trained at her, silent, finger a hair’s breadth from the trigger.

“It’s not something you can _try._ You can’t return a child.” She let herself slip down the wall, the pain building despite the pressure of her arm around her stomach. She laid her head on her knees.

“No, but you can kill it.” His voice broke with anger on the word _kill_ and her head snapped up.

Her lips trembled. Tears welled in her eyes. “It wasn’t easy! It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You think I don’t feel horrible? I feel…evil. I feel selfish. I feel like I’m going to carry this for the rest of my life, but I did it because I had to. It was the right thing for _me._ ”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Mackenzie. It’s fine.” Calm, detached, he got up from the bed and went out to the living room. Mac flinched. She could feel the world opening up between them, feel the space begin to engulf them, like they might never cross it again.

She got shakily to her feet, tripping after them, hoping to stop her world from collapsing around her. Will was pouring himself a drink, eyes cast at the skyline out the window.

“Will…” _I’m scared. I’m scared this is going to be the end of us, and I never wanted that. I’m scared that you won’t yell, won’t let yourself get mad, and we’re going to go on with this thing between us._ She couldn’t say any of it. The words died in her throat as she stared at him, shoulders set like he was carrying the burdens of the world.

“I said it’s fine, Mac. Just…let me process this.”

She swallowed, her mouth so dry that it hurt. “Yeah. Okay.” She backed into the bedroom, shutting the door between them. Her hand shook on the doorknob and she braced her forehead against the wood as a sob overtook her. She banged her palm hard against it, slamming and slamming until her skin was filled with numb heat.

She didn’t hear Will’s breath catch as he listened to her pounding on the door. She didn’t see the red rim around his eyes. She couldn’t tell how desperately he wanted to forgive her, or how impossible it seemed. She couldn’t see how much he loved her or how much it killed him that he _knew_ why she had done it. But the knowledge didn’t take away the pain.

She didn’t see it, but she guessed. She knew because she felt it. It settled in her heart, burrowing, finding permanent residence in her soul.

Mackenzie had always known what she wanted. She’d laid her path and traveled down it. She knew about sacrifices. She was prepared to make most of them. She just wasn’t sure she’d ever been prepared to lose _this much._

 

                                                                                                 


	2. I Believe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought a lot about how to bring Will and Mac to a (sort of) resolution. The chapter title (along with everything else from this story) is from Spring Awakening. Hope you enjoy!

It was a slow torture to know that Will was right next to her, within arm’s reach, but untouchable. The last time she had ruined them ( _the last time._ A habit. She had a habit of breaking them) she had run as far as she could. Will asked for space between them and she’d given it. She couldn’t do that now. There were vows between them, promises and expectations. So, Will had slipped into bed next to her, turned away, and she tried to pretend he was asleep just as she was sure he ignored the sound of her tears. It was a special kind of torture to have the semblance of normalcy with none of the warmth. A mock life.

Mackenzie got out of bed before the alarm. She’d been watching the minutes tick by on it for hours anyway. She took her clothes into the bathroom. She braced herself against the counter, staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to make sense of it. _How could she look so normal and feel so changed?_ There she was. Tired maybe, a frown marring her features, pale, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by a bad night’s sleep. There was a part of her that wished it was more, something to show Will just how much everything had affected her. She shook her hands out to get them to stop trembling so she could put her makeup on. She tested her smile in the mirror before she left the bathroom, wondering if she was the only one who could see just how fake it was.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Mac did a double take, stopped short by Will’s question as she came back into the bedroom. He wasn’t exactly looking _at_ her, more in her general vicinity. “Pardon?” She asked, surprised by her own formality. She toed her heel against the floor.

“I just meant—I know that there can be some side effects and you seemed like you were in pain last night, so…” he trailed off, apparently as mesmerized by the shifting of her heel as she was.

“Oh. I’m all right. It’s not much…Thank you.” She glanced up to see him shrug.

“I’ll see you at work.”

The words were so simple, but they hit her hard enough to knock the wind from her. Mackenzie blinked rapidly before the tears could form, forcing herself to stand straight, firm, strong. “If that’s what you want.” _As though it didn’t change everything, as if it weren’t just one more sign that they were falling apart._

“It is.” He looked at her then, leaving no question of his feelings. His gaze was flat, careful, the kind that he hadn’t even quite been able to muster when she’d told him about Brian all those years ago. Even then, she’d had the sense that if he would just listen to her they might be able to mend it in time. Maybe that was the true sign she had broken one of God’s laws, when she couldn’t even see a trace of forgiveness in Will’s eyes.

She swallowed down the nauseous churning of her stomach and picked up her bag. “Of course,” she said, not quite touching him as she passed. He closed the door behind her before she could even turn to tell him to have a good day.

\---

“You’re not eating,” Jim had tried to ignore it. He’d tried not to remember the night almost a month before that had her nearly hyperventilating on the floor of her office. He tried not to connect that to how tight her skin was drawn over her bones. He tried, but he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“Jim.” She warned, pausing her scribbling to stare him down.

“No, you’re starting to scare me, Mac. You’re scaring everyone.”

Everyone except Will, who came in to the office after her and left before, who shut his office door when she came to the bullpen, who never made it up to her office. Jim wondered just what their life must have been like at home for Will not to notice _this_ , how her collarbone stood out so much more than it ever had before, how her clothes were too big, her cheeks hollow. He wondered, but he didn’t ask.

Mac sighed, taking off her glasses and resting her chin on steepled hands. “I’m not doing it on purpose, Jim. I can’t eat. I can’t explain it. It’ll pass.”

Jim leaned forward, “Try to explain.”

Mac shook her head, “Jim, you don’t need to worry. I’ll be fine.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Explain it to me.”

Mac could stare to and she met his eyes just as steadily.

“I’m not leaving, Mac. Not until you tell me.”

“I’m never hungry.” She waved it off like it was nothing. “Most of the time when I try to eat, I either choke on it or…”

He didn’t press her for the “or” he could guess well enough what she meant and he could see her eyes starting to shine. He reached across the desk and took her hand. She startled at his touch and he wondered how long it had been since anyone ( _Will_ ) had shown her affection.

“Come live with me.”

“Jim, that’s sweet, but I have an apartment.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but whatever it is stresses you out so bad you can’t even eat. Come live with me, at least for a little while.”

Mac couldn’t help the tears that slid silently down her cheeks as she looked at him. “Jim…”

He let go of her hand, carefully as though it might break if he weren’t holding it together. “Don’t say anything now, just think about it, okay?”

“I will,” the promise was thick with tears.

\---

Sloan placed a bracing hand on Will’s knee to stop it from bouncing. “She’ll be fine. They said she would fine.” He grimaced.

They’d said other things, about malnutrition, and IVs to replenish what her body had lost, and seeing a therapist. They’d asked questions too, questions he didn’t know the answer to, but Jim did. _Jim_ had noticed that his wife was starving to death before he did, all because he refused to fucking look at her. He kept telling himself that they would be fine, that he just needed space and he would stop feeling so angry, and they would be able to talk, but he feigned sleep when she came home, went to another room when she entered. Eventually she just started staying late and going in early. She was fine. She had work. They were fine (except that he knew they weren’t. The silence ate at him until he felt like he would lose his mind. He was furious, devastated, he wasn’t even sure what the hell he was, but whatever they were, they weren’t fine).

“Did she do it on purpose?” He asked Jim, hands curled into fists, a shield against the answer. _What if she did this to show me that it mattered to her? To show me that it affected her?_ The thought made his stomach turn, but he made himself ask. He hadn’t even noticed that she was fucking starving. He deserved whatever he got.

Jim shook his head, “No. It was the stress I think. She wasn’t doing it on purpose.”

Relief flooded through him in a wave and Will slumped against the chair, closing his eyes as though in prayer.

“What happened, Will?” Sloan’s voice was quiet. She had only stopped shaking herself when the doctor came to tell them that Mac would be fine. She’d been the one to catch Mac when she collapsed in the middle of the bullpen, her body finally succumbing to weeks of exhaustion and malnutrition. Sloan had screamed, called for Jim who’d come tearing out of his office, already poised for action as though he had been expecting something like that to happen. She hadn’t called for Will. She’d noticed what he had hoped no one in the office had, the distance between them.

Will had followed Jim out all the same, forced to see what he’d been ignoring for a month, forced to realize what would have taken him only a glance in her direction to notice, she was not coping. They had different ways of dealing with stress. They always had. Will liked to bluster. He yelled at Jim, made ridiculous demands, filled his office with a cloud of cigarette smoke. Mac internalized. He’d always known that about her. She buried herself in work and berated herself. She didn’t take anything out on others, only herself. He should have known that’s what she would do. He should have asked. He should have asked her how she was more than the one time the morning after she’d told him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Will answered, “not now.”

\---

“I promised I’d never hurt you.” It was the first thing Will said as he walked up to her hospital bed, but his words were lost because Mac was looking at his eyes. She saw a lot of things there; confusion, hurt, fear, but her breathing came easier when she saw what she’d been looking for. For weeks now she’d searched for it, across longer distances than she had ever wanted. She saw love, and that was all that mattered.

“I hurt you first.” Her voice was hoarse and her mouth dry.

“I don’t remember there being a caveat.” He took her hand, tracing his fingers carefully around the IV. Her breath stuttered at his touch and he flinched. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would touch her. He should never have let it surprise her, no matter what she’d done.

“Listen, Will, you don’t have to feel bad about this. I don’t want you to forgive me out of pity. Jim said I could stay with him for a while. You could have some space and I could get better, and you wouldn’t have to feel bad about any of it.”

“Live apart?” He searched her face. “Is that what you want?”

Mackenzie shook her head, as pale as the pillow underneath her, “Of course not, but I can’t go on like we’ve been doing. It’s too much to be that close and not be able to talk to you, to have you resent me. I’ll be fine with Jim.”

“And then what? Divorce?”

Her fingers curled into the blanket, her breathing heavy with unshed tears and he immediately regretted the question.

“If that’s what you need.” She forced the words through trembling lips.

“No,” he said quickly, touching the backs of his fingers to her too-sharp cheekbone. “It’s not what I need. It’s not what I want. None of this is what I fucking want.”

Mac nodded. “I’m so sorry.” She took a deep breath and it sounded painful. “We need to talk.”

Will pulled a chair over from the corner, bringing it close enough that he could hold her hand. “I’m listening this time, I swear.”

He was. Mackenzie talked, about everything, about promises she’d made to herself, about how more often than she wanted to admit she found herself wishing that she’d kept the baby, wishing that she had abandoned all her notions about what she wanted out of life. She told him that she could only fall asleep when she’d cried herself into exhaustion, about the panic attack in her office that lead to a bottle of Xanax she kept in her purse. Pain etched her every word, it seeped into her silence too as she paused for his story, gripping his hand as tightly as she could manage as he tripped through his words, stumbling over feelings he hadn’t realized he had until he was describing them to her.

When he found himself choking on words, tears threatening to spill, he couldn’t even bring himself to care. He’d been waiting for forgiveness to come, but as he looked at Mac, broken and bruised and not at all whole, he realized that forgiveness was not what they needed. They needed someone to share their pain with. There was only one person who would ever understand and denying that he needed her was a mistake.

“I love you.” It was the only feeling that really mattered in the end. It trumped all the others. Anger, sadness, were no match for it. It was only when he pushed it away that he ever ran into trouble. It didn’t mean that he would forget what she’d done, it meant that he wouldn’t forget what she’d gone through because of it. It meant that he would be there for her.

And when she said it back, breathless with tears, it meant that she would be there for him too. They could get through anything, Will knew, as long as they had that.

                                                                                                 


End file.
